Revenue Recognition Summit 2017 Wrap-Up

Jagan Reddy, SVP RevPro at Zuora, welcomed us back for Day 2 of Revenue Recognition Summit 2017 with a brief discussion of the differences between ASC 605 and 606 and a reminder that Finance are our heroes, the guardians of the business. He also laid out the product roadmap for RevPro, taking a look into the future when revenue metrics move to the front office.

Monika Saha, Zuora, VP Product RevPro, and Sai Prasad Marri, Product Management Lead for RevPro, then took the stage to discuss the next wave of product innovation in revenue management. They shared what the RevPro team has been up to over the last 12 months (spoiler alert: they’ve been very busy, with 65,000 hours invested in product development resulting in 9 product releases!) and detailed some new features.

Partners including PwC, KPMG, and Connor Group kept up the energy on the main stage with discussions around the last mile of ASC 606 adoption, the revenue automation journey, and how and where business and technology converge to address the rev rec challenge.

If we had to summarize the main themes and topics covered during this year’s conference, it would be timelines, data, documentation and the importance of just digging in and getting started with the implementation process!

Here are some of the highlights from today’s great presentations and discussions:

“The differences between 605 and 606: The new standards are revolving around performance obligation. That’s going to be the key driver for revenue treatment, cost treatment, and reporting.” – Jagan Reddy, SVP RevPro at Zuora

“Today we are the only solution that are automating 300+ use cases. It’s fully rule driven, fully configurable. At the end of the day, this is going to cut down the time it takes for you to implement and operationalize the new standards.” – Monika Saha, VP Product RevPro

“Revenue has always been a back office system. But it also lives in the order to cash lifecycle. It starts as soon as the opportunity comes in and evolves. People start thinking about pricing, discounting, financial impact. How do we move back office info to front office? We want to move this all up front to give Sales power. Today you are doing this, but it’s happening manually. RevPro will automate this.” – Jagan Reddy, SVP RevPro at Zuora

“We’ve been talking about ASC 606 for quite a while. Now, we’re in the last mile of adoption. We won’t have an opportunity for an accounting change that will be as impactful as this one will be in our entire careers.” – Peter Schraeder, partner in systems and data consulting practice at PwC

“Get ahead of disclosures. Once you gather your list, draft them. Drafting will help you to highlight what decisions still need to be made. Take a step back, create what those charts should look like, and see what info you already have to fill those charts, and what’s missing. You can then come up with a solution for addressing missing data. And then build your governance structure around disclosures.” – Josh Dalton, Manager in risk assurance practice at PwC

“As we think about ASC 606 there’s going to be construction on the road, there are going to be detours. Our policies are being written as we’re going down this journey. You can do as much to plan as possible, but you have to be ready for the unexpected.” – Roxanne Brady, Financial Operations Partner, Connor Group

“Our approach has been to take most of the system to the extent we can. What makes sense to automate versus handle another way? Don’t worry too much about corner cases. Take a position and continue to move forward on automation.” – Ludmila Marandjeva, Sr. Director, Revenue, MobileIron

“There’s a clean methodological approach to rev rec. There are key things to make sure you do. But it’s important to note that depending on size of company, impacts, complexity of accounting and operations, you’re going to need to right size your project.” – Sara Dioguardi, Managing Director at KPMG

“Everyone’s impacted. You need to translate this into how are we impacted. Even if material impact isn’t huge, you need to elevate this discussion to a business case perspective. It’s not just an accounting discussion. It’s an organizational discussion.” – Jim Murphy, Managing Director at KPMG

“As challenging as this is, it’s an opportunity to align systems and data, to realign other initiatives that impact the effectiveness of how you manage your business and of your technology stack. How can you as an organization capitalize on the pain and get some results out of it?” – Lou Trebino, Principal at KPMG

“Data is a critical topic. Data is a complex process with ASC 606. If you think about the plumbing in your house, Systems are the pipes. And when you turn on the water, that’s your data. And it’s only when you turn on the water that you find out if you have leaks.” – Daniel Sorensen, Director, Advanced Risk and Compliance Analytics at PwC

“ASC 606 came with new requirement of disclosure. RevPro makes sure that all business users have their compliance needs met.” – Sondi Kri – Revenue Systems Analyst, RevGurus

“One of the primary objectives is to match the expense with the timing of revenue recognition. Matching revenue and expenses is a big pain point…unless you’re using a great system like RevPro.” – Jacob Sperry, Director Technical Accounting at Connor Group

Thanks to all who joined us at Revenue Recognition Summit 2017. And we hope to see you at a future event.